16 replies to this topic

[cre8pc]

It's slowed down here, in what used to be the most popular area of the forums. Typically the basic rules were to ask for help for you site and as "payment", offer feedback on someone else's site.

Some people ask for extensive reviews that require more time and commitment from members. What are your thoughts on a small fee for site feedback that would require more time, suggestions for improvements, and more details? I can make this small and set it up via Paypal, such as a donation.

Want your feedback and thoughts first

[tam]

Yes, and I'm stingy, better than that I think other people will. BUT you have to sell it as a service. If you run a forum and people sign up and then find out the can pay extra for a review you might get the odd one but mostly things will keep ticking over.

Now, imagine the homepage with a screen cap of the latest site reviewed, plus little ones of the last half dozen, example comments. Info about the service offered, even some of the people that might comment. Links through to the latest blog posts, hot topics, success stories, testimonials 'my site traffic doubled after being reviewed at cre8asite' etc. it all has to tie together - at the moment the homepage & forum don't look like the same website.

People who have paid are also less likely to be the one line I'm just spamming and will never come back type hospital posts that put people off taking the time to comment in the hospital.

If you talk it up enough and get the traffic people will want to review sites to build up their name and expert status, and people will want to pay the fee to get the opportunity for review from these people. There aren't many places that you can get a one stop overview like that for $30.

[DCrx]

Let us say membership costs $30. Okay, you now have thirty forum credits to spend on a variety of services.

Using this example, you can rate a site, but only by expending your credits. And the site facilitates this. A site user can also post their credits as awards or bounties.

App developers can post a bug list, and allow users to bid bugs up or down. Like a stock exchange, this assigns priority far better than simple comment -- even when those voting didn't purchase the credits themselves.

Finally, the site allows transfer of credits. You can award users for bug hunts and completed task lists in a critique. This is just one little part of a bigger service a forum could offer. Make those virtual dollars work properly, you can entice both subscribers and new members. Don't and you won't.

Those thirty dollars are seen as gone. A donation. Charity. What I'm talking about is making the money spent as something you can then use within the forum environment. This is a tangible service level upgrade -- a subscriber can easily understand the benefit of payment.

Outside the forum development bubble, this isn't science fiction. It's called social currency. This is social. This is commerce. This is what you'd pay a forum money for. Otherwise, there are five thousand free outlets to post a site and get back a casual comment masquerading as critique.

In a parallel dimension -- where even one tenth of the hype had a basis in reality -- this wouldn't be difficult to implement. It would be a module you turn on.

Edited by DCrx, 08 January 2012 - 04:24 AM.

[A.N.Onym]

I think that as an additional service, it can be helpful and useful, if the expectations are set right.

In this case, the poster can expect to get a reasonable, thorough review of their website (or of any element). In our case, it's something based on knowledge and experience, I highly doubt that there are 5 000 similar places, where one can get a website review of the same caliber.

I do agree with DCrx that a social currency would be helpful to engage forum members. Pay $30 for a review or pay $30 for an ad free forum and get a professional website review? Sounds better, probably, at least to the one without an ad blocker

[jonbey]

Who will be doing the reviews? Is there an agreement amongst mods already? At the moment many people will chime in to give their opinion. If someone pays to get a review does that mean just one reviewer will look at their site? Or a specific set of reviewers, e.g. some experienced in design, usability, SEO, etc.? As soon as you ask people to pay you need to show that they will get a good reply. It could help benefit the forums / business well if it works. I would pay for a review if I knew it meant getting some great feedback from experienced people. However, I would not be a happy customer if I paid and then I only got a couple of short replies from people who had no public credentials. Some of the best advice here comes from people who like to keep themselves anonymous, but how will that work when you start asking people to pay.

Maybe what would work is to have a set of review categories (design, usability, architecture SEO etc) and you pay for a specific one and get a reply from the person/s who are responsible for those areas, and clients can see their full profile first to understand what they are buying.

[A.N.Onym]

Makes sense. Right now, the reviews are pretty good. For them to be better, the reviewee should rather ask for specific areas of assistance, rather than ask general questions. It'd help the reviews more, than the fee.

[Dr.Marie]

I like the idea of doing more promoting of site reviews. This is one of the things that brought me here. And the discussion on my site's new look and direction was life changing for me!

I'm concerned though that if you charge for site reviews a few things might happen:
-You're not going to get a lot of people asking for reviews
-Like Jon said, what happens if no good advice is given? I can see people complaining that they asked a site review and no "big names" replied, or they didn't like what they got. What if someone asks for a site review on a piece of crap site? If they're not happy with the review then you're going to have to deal with unhappy customers.

I like the idea of putting extra promotion into the site reviews. Perhaps create an Adwords or Facebook campaign? Spend some money now to bring in some traffic. Then, once a few good reviews are in place that will bring in more traffic. Place ads on the pages (perhaps more ads for non-logged in members?) and the Adsense revenue should do well.

That's my guess though. In my experience with my site so far, every time I have tried to sell something I've made very few sales. But, if I give good stuff away for free then I see more traffic and more Adsense revenue.

[tam]

I think you'd need to start with general, and split once you'd built it up, otherwise you'd end up with the same problem as the forum - a million sections with half a dozen posts spread between them. It would be good to maybe give people some guide questions to answer to give us a better idea of what they want to know though.

I like the idea of social currency. I think you could throw in free reviews or a free review once you got to x posts, that way you'd get the people that will pay for a review as they don't want to join a community and spend months earning the option, but you'll convert some of those to forum users when the want more info. And you'll get some that earning the free reviews by reviewing others and participating in the forum will be a selling point.

I'm not sure about experts, most forums have kudos/thanks type addons that you could use to get the community to vote for helpful reviewers and give them status. I know big name people would provide a pull, but does it just have to be them to be a good service? I like to think I'm occasionally useful, but no one outside of cre8ate would know who I was Peer reviews are still helpful though, and the non expert opinion can be as useful sometimes. Plus, it can be easy to be in a bit of a bubble, a good portion of the people that post in the hospital couldn't name the top 5 SEO people anyway. Although some are well known in the industry, a lot of the small business owners wouldn't know them from joe blogs. We know the hospital can be really good so we just have to sell it.

I guess you could build on it and have the option to pay a specific reviewer (if they agree obviously) to take a look for you. It would be an incentive to offer reviews, to build up your reputation, so people picked you to pay for a review. That's maybe getting ahead of things though.

I don't think it would need to be a massive change to what we do now, but presented in a different way - like a website trying to sell a service rather than a squirrelled away bit of a forum.

[A.N.Onym]

I think the best we can hope for is a guaranteed amount of 2-3 extensive reviews by established forum members (not necessarily the same ones), maybe including the forum moderator, at times, as well. If there aren't 2-3 reviews within a week, then the forum moderator or other moderators can chip in.

However, if it becomes a custom for non-moderators not to write detailed reviews, it'll be a pretty cheap job with predictable results (either overburn or lesser quality reviews).

Edited by A.N.Onym, 09 January 2012 - 06:23 AM.

[Walter]

Hello,

I think if you're looking to get new people to pay for a site review, you're barking up the wrong tree. I would pay for one now, knowing what I know about the the forums now, but I would have never done so when I first stumbled across this site. I would have moved on to someplace else, and I probably would have never really got to know how vaulable the site is. I think you need to find a way to generate income that isn't dependent on new people laying out cash for access or services.

Walter

[glyn]

FREE FREE FREE.

Payment for speedier reviews if you want.

I review sites as a bit of fun, and time to relax., not to any schedule.

Think it could get messy, but I'll always do it for free.

[jonbey]

Also, although unlikely, what happens if someone pays for the service and gets some advice that for some reason or other turns out to harm their website?

[cre8pc]

What are your thoughts on hiring web testers with some of the ad revenue? I dunno...a pandora's box? Just had the idea pop in my head.

[AbleReach]

What about the idea of an option to pay for a private Website Hospital thread? Normally our Website Hospital threads are visible in search engines, which can make some people shy about asking the really dumb questions or sharing really good ideas. Would you pay a nominal fee - say $20 - to have a Website Hospital thread only be viewable if logged in?

Payment could be cash or social currency. People could get a point for each post, ten points for each time a post is liked, etc., and each point could be worth a portion of a dollar when spent on forum-supplied ameneties. Then users could spend points like dollars, or just spend dollars. Of course, we'd need to hunt down what plugins there are for IPB forum software - I haven't looked to see what is out there that can do social currency.

I hesitate to charge a nominal fee for a full, professional review. If the staff develops a service of professional reviews, we should be charging real money. A community-contributed review is more naturally paid for with social currency.

[tam]

That's a good point, most people don't want to use their url in the hospital because they don't want to rank for it later. I know the rule hasn't been enforced recently but if it was then paying for it to be private would be something with value.

If you needed 100 posts/points/credits to add a topic tothe web hospital and you could earn those with social credit or cheat and pay for them - people may pay for the convenience. That way you're not charging/making promises about experts.

[A.N.Onym]

To be honest, I've always thought that an active link or URL is enough in a review request, but if someone thinks that we need to enforce URLs in titles, feel free to let me know

I like the idea of paying for a private review, in one way or another.

As for testers, they have to be paid for by the reviewee, if he desires. We could provide the management service of inviting the testers, explaining them their tasks and compiling the resulting reviews into a post, for a fee. Off the top of my head, it'd cost at least as much as it costs to hire testers.

Then again, charging real money for reviews might be more honest and better for both parties. For example, if we charge $70/hr, then a 3-5hr review/write up would cost $210-350. It could be one reviewer or several, with different rates due to their background/experience. Who knows, maybe it'll lead to more full review requests from Kim, too

[sansonj72]

There is a ton of talent in here that people like myself trust. I think you should have a free section for basic things, but I think you should have a section where your members pay to be in and are also rated- these members would be service providers. Unless they deliver 4+ star reviews they will be removed. They should have to be members here for X years with Y input, etc prior to be being able to be in a position to solicit work. I would pay for work from a to z depending on if I need help. Many of you have been always helpful to me in here, and I have tried to ask for paid services in the past, but felt it was not allowed here, even though I am trying to hire somebody to do something for me. Basically advice will be free to a point, and to take it to the next level you will have an option to click here for a professional bid.